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The Western allies of the United States gathered in Munich last week, anxious, drifting and desperate in the face of the raw manifestation of muscle flexion of President Trump on the world scene. But these are people who are not at the Munich security conference table that have become the most marginalized in Mr. Trump’s world.
Palestinians and Afghans, Greenlanders and Panamanians – these are the real pawns in the geopolitical chess of the president. Their priorities, their preferences and their aspirations seem almost next to Mr. Trump’s ambition to redraw the world map according to the “first” America “.
Even the Ukrainians now appear at risk that a peace regulation will be negotiated above their heads, while Mr. Trump and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia are embarking on talks to end a war that made Tens of thousands of Ukrainian deaths, a large part of the country in the country in the country in the country in the country in the country in the country in the country in the country in the country in the country in le pays dans le pays dans le pays dans le pays dans le pays dans le pays dans le pays dans le pays dans le pays dans le pays dans le pays dans le pays dans le pays dans le pays dans le pays dans le pays dans le pays in the country in the country in the country in the country in the country in a country in a large part of the country in the country in the country in the country in the country in a large part of the country in the country in the countries in a large part of the country in the country in the country in a large part of the country in the country in a large part of the country in the country in a country in a large ruins, and almost a fifth of its territory between the Russian hands.
“Strong-Arming was part of American foreign policy throughout our history,” said Charles A. Kupchan, professor of international affairs at Georgetown University. “But there was generally an effort to legitimize American power by a certain form of dialogue. It is absent from Trump’s foreign policy. »»
In his propensity to conclude agreements that make little expectation of the most directly affected by them, Mr. Trump’s foreign policy echoes that of a bygone era, when the imperial powers have led a great game for influence , unpretentious that their conquests are rooted in the desires of local populations.
The expansionist instincts of Mr. Trump were compared to those of William McKinley, the 25th American president, whose victory in the Spanish-American war of 1898 brought the Philippines, Guam and Puerto Rico under the control of a United States future. He also annexed Hawaii.
But Mr. Trump is also in the tradition of Mark Sykes and François Georges-Picot, the British and French diplomats who led the secret negotiations that dug the Levantine remains of the Ottoman Empire during the First World War. Borders of the modern Middle East, with little respect for the ethnic and religious communities that their lines have crossed.
Historians retrace the resentments that broke out in conflict in the Middle East until the arbitrary nature of the region’s partition in the region. Some people wonder if Mr. Trump’s rider’s cavalier approach to the interests of Palestinians or Panamanians could stir up new tensions and ignite future conflicts.
“As shown on October 7, you ignore the inhabitants at your own risk,” said Richard N. Haass, former president of the foreign relations council, referring to the deadly attack against Israel by combatants from Hamas de Gaza . This sparked the war that Mr. Trump proposed to finish by dispersing 2.1 million Palestinians from Gaza in Jordan and Egypt, then taking control of the enclave to redevelop him as a Arab Riviera.
“In the end, what is happening in Ukraine or Gaza or Panama will be strongly influenced by the people who live in these places,” continued Mr. Haass. “The ability of the United States, Russia or China to control these things is not automatic.”
Haass said it was too early to conclude that Trump intended to cut the Ukrainians from negotiation with Russia. The president himself insisted that Ukraine would be part of the process, just like other countries. He called President Volodymyr Zelensky from Ukraine after talking to Mr. Putin.
But the announcement by Trump of “immediate” peace negotiations with Russia – blinding Mr. Zelensky as well as European leaders – bore the characteristics of a Blitzkrieg approach of geopolitics at the start of his second term. His proposal to empty Gaza seemed to be devoid of the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, who visited him in Washington.
The analysts said that Mr. Trump’s lightning speed had been designed to eliminate potential criticism from his unbalanced and short-circuits transactions the type of lobbying or control that could delay or dilute them. Some said Trump had learned from his first mandate when his Secretary of State at the time, Mike Pompeo supervised more traditional negotiation with Taliban leaders to end the war in Afghanistan.
While the Trump administration has left the pro-Western government of Afghanistan and the American NATO allies outside the process, the prolonged public nature of talks brought demonstrators, including groups of women, on the streets From Doha, the capital of Qatar, where the two parties were a meeting.
Critics claim that the 2020 agreement opened the door to the Taliban Calamitteer Taliban control 17 months later, although Mr. Trump allies blame this on what they say is the sloppy withdrawal by President Joseph R. Biden Jr. American troops.
“Trump has learned that the establishment and the media can exert enormous pressure on an agreement,” said Vali R. Nasr, professor of international affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. “His approach is now to present to the world a fait accompli, without place to influence things.”
“The agreements which are also opaque and which are made quickly are more vulnerable to serious errors because they are not subject to a meticulous examination,” said Nasr, who worked on Afghan policy during the Obama administration.
Mr. Trump is not the only president to try to conclude private agreements. President Barack Obama negotiated a rapprochement with Cuba – later reversed by Mr. Trump – under a veil of secret. Obama authorized American diplomats to open a secret rear channel to Iranian officials, which paved the way for a nuclear agreement that Trump also repealed later.
Trump often seems more comfortable to deal with adversaries than allies. This could open the door, Haass told a new series of diplomacy with Iran. Haass, who has long argued that the United States had to redefine its objectives on Ukraine, said that there was also a potential for Trump to progress with Mr. Putin in the drop in war.
The problem is likely to come to Mr. Trump’s efforts to put pressure on the allies. Neither King Abdullah II of Jordan nor President Abdel Fattah El-Sissi of Egypt gave in his proposal to take Palestinian refugees from Gaza. Panama has rejected its request that the United States entered the Panama Canal.
Denmark has rejected Mr. Trump’s proposal to acquire Greenland, its semi-auto territory. Has Greenland itself, although Prime Minister, Múte Egede said that he would be open to working with the United States on Defense and Natural Resources. In this, Egede could have a clearer overview of Mr. Trump’s motivations than many leaders.
The president’s foreign policy said analysts, is so rooted in commercial calculations that local populations barely enter the equation. Greenland is in precious arctic expedition routes and, like Ukraine, has rich mineral deposits. Panama has its channel. Gaza has a picturesque Mediterranean coast.
“What is different with Trump is that he is 100%materialist,” said Professor Kupchan, who worked on European affairs in the Obama administration. “There is no Iota of ideology in all of this.”
When McKinley began the Hispano-American war, said Professor Kupchan, he did it ostensibly to release the Cubans from Spanish colonial domination. Even the conquest of the Philippines, he said, was carried out under the mantle of a “civilizing mission”.
“This is devoid of any civilizing mission,” he said. “This type of bald transactional approach, without frills by any ideology, is new.”
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